Beyond the Misty Shore (8 page)

“Oh my, no.” She refilled the muffin pan from a large stainless bowl still half-full of batter. “The Judge would never sit still for that. He worked out a special deal with the Coast Guard about our lighthouse. Not sure how he did it, exactly, but he said something about humanitarian reasons.” She slid the pan into the oven, then passed Maggie the cloth-wrapped muffins. “Hatch was born, raised, and has grown old in that lighthouse. Moving would’ve killed him, and that’s fact. He can stay there, so long as the light isn’t functional.”

Maggie took the muffins. They felt warm against her palm. “I never thought of the Coast Guard as having a heart before, but clearly it does. That’s comforting, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” Miss Hattie said, “and I reckon Hatch does, too. Very wise man, Hatch.”

Maggie walked toward the door to the mud room. “There’s a lot of comforting things here, Miss Hattie.” Maggie gestured with the muffins. “Thank you.”

The white-haired angel patted her soiled apron and looked at Maggie through those sparkling emerald, too-seeing eyes. “We’re all capable of comforting, dear. Sometimes it’s the comfort that’s hardest to give that brings the greatest rewards. Remember that, mmm?”

Feeling the warm whisper of heat warning her of something significant happening that she’d felt before, Maggie blinked, nodded, then blinked again. For some reason, she sensed approval. “I will,” she said softly, then nearly knocked to her knees by guilt about MacGregor, she went out to the mud room and closed the door.

By the time she’d skirted the back corner of the house and stepped onto the flagstone walk, she’d changed her mind fifty times, torn between going on and going back and watching MacGregor.

She had to stop this. Brushing against an evergreen, she saw a bed of giant delphiniums that had lost the battle to winter. Their stems drooped and what remained of their dull and faded blossoms kissed the ground.

Tears formed in Maggie’s eyes. Cursing herself as
forty kinds of fool, she swore. “I will
not
feel guilty about this.” She shouldn’t. She’d come here for Carolyn and that’s where Maggie’s loyalty had to lie. MacGregor was part of that problem... maybe. His guilt about Carolyn could be the source of his troubles here.

What about the oddities?

Maggie plucked a leaf off her sleeve. She’d ignore them. The whispers, the despair, and even that flicker of interest she felt for MacGregor she had no business feeling, lied and swore to herself she wasn’t feeling and would give just about anything she owned not to be feeling—she’d ignore them all.

Someone was watching her.

At the side of the garage, she came to a dead stop. The feeling burned strong, nearly overwhelming her. She glanced toward the house, scanned the windows, and saw not a soul. Turned, looked across the sweeping lawn to the stretch of firs, let her gaze drift toward the pond, the gazebo, to the little stone wall between Seascape land and the next-door neighbor’s. Again, no one. Nothing but the morning haze, the gentle wind rustling the leaves on the evergreens and shimmying the sticklike branches on those left winter-barren.

Help him.

That godawful whisper! The hairs on Maggie’s neck stood on end. She ran to the front corner of the house, stopped, and stared at the rocks at the boundary line.

“MacGregor.”

Her chest muscles clenched. Her breath swooshed out. She couldn’t move.

There he stood, as he had all the other times, holding the painting. So still. So very still.

Help him.

“Shut up. Go away,” she pleaded. “Please.”

Help him.

The peace she’d recaptured drained away. Why couldn’t she move? “I can’t help him! Don’t you see that? I... can’t!”

Help him, Maggie.
The whisper grew stronger, clearer.

Fear streaked up her spine and spiked into the roof of her mouth. She tasted it on her tongue, felt it permeate her every pore. God help her, the whisper hadn’t come from her conscience. It hadn’t come from her at all.

It had a man’s voice.

“Who are you?” She darted her gaze, but didn’t see any man anywhere. “How are you doing this?”

Miss Hattie’s words flooded her mind.
Sometimes it’s the comfort that’s hardest to give that brings the greatest rewards.

“Never mind. I—I don’t care how you’re doing it. Just stop. Just go away.”

Help him.

Maggie cupped her hands over her ears to block out the voices. “Don’t you hear me? I can’t help him. I can’t do it!”

This time is different.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

He could die.

MacGregor fell.

“Nooo!” Maggie screamed. She ran, half-sliding, half-falling, down the sloping lawn toward the boundary line. Her feet pounded the ground, jarring her ankles, her knees, her teeth. Her heavy breaths fogged the, air and more than halfway there she realized that whatever had held her captive and had forbidden her to move had released her. Who—what—was it?

Her chest heaving, she dropped to her jeaned knees beside MacGregor. He was so pale! Surprised she still held them, she set the muffins aside on the ground. “MacGregor?”

No answer.

She checked his throat for a pulse and found it steady. It beat hard against her fingertips. “MacGregor?”

No response.

He was still alive. Think, Maggie. Think! She cupped his cool face, pulled back his eyelids with her thumbs and looked at his eyes. They were rolled back in his head. He was unconscious.

What should she do? The voice said to help him. But how? She wasn’t a healer! She didn’t know what to do.

Frustrated, feeling inadequate, scared stiff to even think about what was happening here, she gritted her teeth, plunged her fingertips through his thick, black hair and glided them over his scalp. No bumps. Was that good?

Geez, had she lost her sense? Of course no bumps was good—unless there was internal swelling. “MacGregor?”

Still no answer.

He’d been out for so long! Much longer than the other times.

This time is different.

He could die.

“Oh God, MacGregor. If you knew how lousy I was in a crisis, you’d come around.”

In her mind, she saw Bill pulling MacGregor back onto the Seascape side of the boundary line.

“Yes! Yes!” She scrambled to her feet. Shoved, tugged, and pulled until she’d lifted his shoulders and worked her arms around his middle. He was too big. She was too little. She couldn’t stretch that far and still gain leverage with her feet. The rocks were so slick!

Fighting panic, she kept her grip, sat down and heaved, hauling his back up against her thighs. His head slammed against her chest. It stung and her jacket zipper cut deep into her skin. Bending her knees, she wedged her boots into hollows in the rocks, then lay back and pulled.

MacGregor moved with her!

Heartened, she scooted back on the dirt-covered rocks, bent her knees, found new footholds, and lay back again. And again, MacGregor scraped the dirt and moved with her.

Certain now that it hadn’t been luck, that the method worked, Maggie repeated it again and again, inching closer to the line.

By the time her bottom slid over it, she was exhausted. A little farther, just a little farther, and MacGregor, too, would cross over. Her arms and legs ached, felt as heavy as lead and trembled, water-weak. Her muscles burned, and her backside hurt more than when at twelve she’d tried to impress Sam Grayson by sitting on the hood of her father’s car, then lied to him about it. That day, her father had spanked her for the first and last time, and he’d put her on six weeks’ restriction.

Carolyn had laughed.

Maggie had cried—and had sat gingerly for two full days. But she’d learned from the experience. Carolyn had told on her because she liked Sam and she wanted Maggie out of the way. That had been but the first of many of Carolyn’s manipulations. And the last time that Carolyn, Maggie’s father, or anyone else had seen Maggie cry. Not since that day had Maggie allowed herself the luxury of tears.

Finally—
dear
God, finally!
—MacGregor’s loafered feet crossed the line. Maggie twisted and tugged her way free of him, then gently lowered his head to the ground, scraping her knuckles raw on the gritty sand-covered rocks. He still hadn’t come to. Why?

What else had Bill and Miss Hattie done?

The handkerchief.

Maggie grimaced, shoved back her sweat-drenched hair. Where was she supposed to get a damn handkerchief?

The muffins!

A white cloth would just have to do. She rushed over, grabbed it, then ran back, unwrapping the fabric folds and stuffing the muffins into her jacket pockets. She shook the crumbs from the cloth. A script
S
had been sewn inside an oval at one corner. This wasn’t a napkin. It was a hankie. A brand new hankie.

Shivering from all that implied, when combined with Miss Hattie’s remarks about comforting, Maggie bent low over MacGregor, as Miss Hattie had, then flapped the hankie back and forth near his face. “Come on, MacGregor. Wake up. Would you just wake up?”

His eyelids fluttered, then opened, and he stared up at her. When he focused, disappointment, then regret, flashed through his eyes, and his mouth twisted into a frown.

Maggie stuffed the hankie into her pocket and just looked at him, so relieved she wanted to cry and so choked up she knew if she tried to whisper a single word she’d bawl for hours.

“Oh, no.” MacGregor squeezed his eyes shut.

Was he blacking out again? “Tyler?” She touched his shoulder. “Tyler, don’t!”

He snapped his lids back. “Why you?”

What did she say to that? Deflated, she frowned back at him. “Charming. How do you manage, MacGregor?” She dropped and sat down beside him, then pulled a muffin from her pocket and took a healthy bite. Her hand shook like a tree caught in a gale. With luck, he’d still be too preoccupied with himself to notice.

“Manage what?” He rolled to his side then sat up, swaying and looking a little woozy. He shook his head.

“Carting around so much arrogance that you’re above saying thanks to a woman who’s just saved your backside.”

He frowned deeper at the smoothed dirt spread over the rock. “Frankly, I’m feeling like most of me is still on the trail.”

He was fine. Out a lot longer than before, but fine. Her eyes burning, the back of her nose tingling, she grinned and pulled a second muffin from her pocket, then passed it to him. “Eat. It always makes me feel better.”

He dusted his hand off on his jean-clad thigh, then took the muffin. The breeze ruffled his hair, the finer hair on his arm. “Thanks.”

“See, it didn’t hurt a bit.” She took another bite. “You can stop worrying. I’m not going to bombard you with questions.”

Relief, then suspicion played across his face. “Right.”

She polished off the last of her muffin. A crumb clung to the corner of her mouth. She licked at it. “Scout’s honor.”

“Uh huh.” Sarcastic, but he visibly relaxed. “And just when were you a Scout?”

“Well, actually I wasn’t.” She pulled out the third muffin and broke it in half. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not sincere.”

He lifted his brows. “Oh, you look sincere, all right.”

She gave him a good frown and held it so he wouldn’t miss it. “Watch it, or I might change my mind and bombard you after all.”

His look debated whether or not she was serious. Without a word, he chewed slowly, then swallowed his last bite and eyed the second half of the third muffin in her hand.

She passed it over, deliberately not meeting his gaze. “MacGregor?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you one question?” She stared at his chin.

“Only one?”

Her heart thudded, and she lifted her gaze to his. “Yeah, only one.”

He stared at her for a long time, the breeze playing with his hair, his gray eyes wary and indecisive. Finally, he heaved a sigh. “Okay.”

Her heart rate shot up like a rocket on lift-off. He’d cracked open the door to his personal life. Now, she just had to stick her foot in it and hope he didn’t slam it shut. She licked a crumb from her fingertip, then brushed the back of her hand over her mouth. “This isn’t my question,” she warned. “But when I ask it, you will answer, right?”

Stone-faced, he nodded.

Knowing from Bill that Carolyn never had mentioned Maggie to MacGregor, she pulled from her memory the single question she’d mulled over, pondered on, and worried about for two years, nearly unable to believe that in a matter of moments she’d know MacGregor’s version of what had happened to Carolyn.

Then Maggie looked into his eyes.

She felt his dread, his desperation, his despair. Sensed his emptiness, his feelings of isolation and regret. So much regret.

But as clearly as she’d heard the whisper, she sensed his regret didn’t stem from what he had done, but from something he hadn’t done. Something he’d... caused.